Happy Birthday, Pinkerton!

She's 4 today!
She is the most loving, talented sweetheart I have ever known.
I think what most amazes me about her is her ability to just jump right in to anything going on around her. She is usually quite fearless, opinionated, and such a risk taker!


This is from last year;
Her favorite color - still pink.
Her favorite food - cookies
Her favorite drink - vanilla soy milk
Her favorite movie - Baby Einsteins Baby Bach
Her favorite song - Night Time is the Right Time by Ray Charles (otherwise known as "the trumpet song")
Her favorite thing to do - sing and dance to music
Her favorite place to be - outside
Her favorite person - her G.G. (Grammy)

And this year;
Her favorite color - It is now... colors - pink still dominating but red, orange, silver and gold are also colors worthy of her respect.
Her favorite food - cake
Her favorite drink - crystal light's strawberry banana juice
Her favorite movie - High School Musical 2
Her favorite song - "Fabulous" by Sharpa
Her favorite thing to do - sing and dance to music
Her favorite place to be - outside
Her favorite person - her G.G. (Grammy) "her girl friend who can drive"

Some things stay the same and some things will never be the same. My little free bird. We are such different people, I am at a loss sometimes as how to communicate with you. You seem to prefer your dad when it comes to activities and having fun. But when you are sick, you literally attach yourself to me. That makes sense, you are so much like your father; bold, stubborn, physical, social, busy! You constantly need activities to keep you from being bored and you have to be around people all the time. It must drive you crazy, being stuck in the house with 2 introverts. While things are stressful right now, I believe it will get better.

Blue skies, talkin bout blue skies

I have been spending some time here... google earth
I travel the coasts all over the world looking for a good place to settle down.
Pinky asks daily when we are going to the beach. I feel the same way. I do not want to hear booming bass, but ocean waves. I want my children to run and run as far and long as they can before something stops them. I want to live off the grid and collect rain water, completely sustainable.
Eat from my husbands grill, wash vegetables from our garden, make jewelry and art from sea treasures washed ashore.
Maybe volunteer to teach kids how to make their own artist trading cards?
Watch my kids grow and learn in tune with the earth, not focused on material things and career success.


Anyway...
I also spend time here... sandradodd.com
I just go down the list on the left side, feeling better after I read, able to apply what I've learned to my parenting. It's okay to not do things like everybody else. To pay attention to how my own unique family has different needs and adjust accordingly.


New Work!
I have actually had the pieces created and set aside for a long time, but I didn't want to list something that resembled another's work. But now, I think it's different enough to be my own.
I feel something has freed inside me, I can create what I what, when I want.

Embossing on Polymer Clay Tutorial

Pinky's lilies have started to bloom, it is so much fun to watch her excitement! She is helping me in our yard a lot this summer, watering, digging, finding bugs. She'll carry a worm around for a half an hour before I point out that it will die, should she continue.
We are growing carrots, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon and lettuce to eat, then marigold's, lilies, roses, sunflowers and Rex wanted to start some cactus.
But the one that gets most of the attention is the primrose! My husband doesn't like them for some strange reason so he cut them all down, but that was evidently what they needed because they came back with a vengeance, filled in our garden beds and make a wonderful splash of color against our gray house! People comment on them all the time and they required no effort on my part at all. Yep, I cheat on our garden.


I made a whole series of collage pieces using a tutorial from Somerset Studio magazine by Jenny Crossley. They called it Industria and used a lot of metal hardware attached to Julie Van Oosten's new line of chip board products. I couldn't quite bring myself to use my hoard of antique metal so I used fabric transfers, Hambly's Vintage Corner rub ons, patterned papers and little bits of patina-ted metal. 2 atc's, 3 tags, 5 pieces of art work to hang.
I had no idea it would be that much fun to scratch and tear at painted surfaces like that. I need to do that more.


I have finished my Embossing on Polymer Clay pdf. (sounds of angelic choir in background)

That was hard.

I wrote several drafts and then decided that it was not decorative enough so I designed the background "paper" using digital elements from Designer Digitals. Then rewrote the whole tutorial on each page.

I have another artist working with me, Kristin Friesen of Sweeter Than Me Designs , she has been invaluable in giving me points I hadn't thought of.

Learning how to publish in a pdf format was the most difficult for me. I found a free service called
cute writer.
Adobe was just to technical for me to understand. Not that I have a clue what cute writer does but I was able to read and comprehend enough to utilize this free service, then once I had it downloaded, it kinda did the work on it's own. Like magic.

I have so many ideas for this, it is hard to work on one at a time!

Vintage Enameled Jewelry Components

That's right! All 3 of you who read my blog get a sneak peek at some of the gorgeous vintage assemblage blooms I will be listing for the next few weeks.

They were extremely fun to design, the kitchen table was a mess again as I arranged and rearranged approx. 20 different necklaces and 15 different pairs of earrings.
They are crafted from vintage findings, like enamel blooms, lucite flowers, rhinestones, glass, pearl, and stones.

I will list my supplier for these AUTHENTIC Vintage Enamel pieces in my upcoming book; Handmade Underground Jewelry. The project they are featured in shows you how assemble a necklace pendant into a brooch!